The present invention relates to prepaid telecommunication card services.
Pre-paid cards are a convenient way for telephone customers to make and pay for telephone toll calls. These cards, which are typically purchased at retail outlets, are available in various denominations corresponding to a certain amount of telephone service—typically some number of flat-rate minutes. In a typical use of a pre-paid card, the card-holder follows as three-stage dialing sequence comprising a) dialing an access number specific to the prepaid service offer that directs the call to the prepaid service provider's platform, such as a local access number or a so-called 8YY toll-free telephone number, meaning a ten-digit number beginning with, for example, 800, 888 or 887, b) then dialing a number (also called the account or PIN number) identifying the individual pre-paid card, and c) then dialing the destination telephone number of the party that the prepaid card holder wants to reach. The prepaid service telephone system maintains an account for each card in a database. The initial monetary balance in the account is the face value of the card. As calls are made using the card, the cost of the calls is automatically subtracted from the account balance. The card remains good for additional calls as long as the account has a non-zero balance.
Entering all of the information noted above is somewhat cumbersome for the card-holder but essentially unavoidable in the public telephone context and has been this way for card services since competitive services were first offered. Arrangements are known, however, that allow for a more convenient use of pre-paid cards for calls over private—typically home—telephone lines. Once having purchased the card, the customer can register or configure it with his service provider so that the card account becomes associated with the customer's home telephone line. Thereafter, toll calls made over that particular telephone line are automatically charged to the pre-paid card account when a destination telephone number is dialed. The card-holder is therefore freed from having to dial an access number and then a card number for each call. Such arrangements are referred to herein as “one-step” systems since only the single step of dialing the destination telephone number is required, as compared to the three-step approach previously mentioned.